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[ADwD Spoilers] Jon and Dany character devolution


Damocles

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It felt by the end of the third book, and even strangely, the opening chapters of the fifth book, that both Jon Snow and Dany had finally gotten past their 'Neddish' phase. Instead, what we see are numerous moments that made you just want to do to both what Gregor did to Elia's children.

I mean, at least in Game of Thrones, Ned had the benefit of a doubt. But it's so ridiculously telegraphed in ADwD that certain characters are screwed. Jon should have kept Ghost with him, and known that Hardhome was suicide, and Dany would never have married the Astapori masters to get her Unsullied. I'd be surprised if anyone didn't start banging their head against the nearest hard surface when Jon confined Ghost for a stupid reason, or at the painfully obvious nature of Dany's betrayal.

Both demonstrated repeatedly, a kind of 'honorable stupidity' that GRRM has already viciously punished from the likes of Rhaegor or Ned. Both Dany and Jon had already surmounted this and come to terms with the 'real world' by the start of the book...with Jon killing the boy in him and hanging Janos Sylnt after becoming Lord Commmander, and Dany deciding to become a ruler instead of just a figurehead.

Then both transform back into idiots and largely get what they deserve. I can't see any kind of redemption or character evolution that both haven't already experienced.

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Probably the most frustrating thing about Jon and Dany. You have a freaking Direwolf and 3 Dragons, respectively, and you refuse to use them.

Give me a direwolf than can sense danger, or 3 dragons and see what happens....

3 dragons who have not been trained and who act wildly. Regarding Ghost, you expect Jon to have Ghost attack brothers of the Night's Watch who disagree with him. How is that going to make things work better for him?

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When did I say use ghost to attack the NW?

He - ghost - has saved Jon's life numerous times. He has never attacked or growled at anyone who has been "good". Yet Jon, in all his wiseness, declares he is marchign south, leaving the wall, forfeiting his vows and locks up his wolf when he does this. Dumb.

and BTW, Jon doesnt leave when his father and brother die, but when Ramsay Bolton in all his craziness writes a letter to him, he decides to leave? doesn't make sense

Dany - again, you have 3 dragons and you choose to lock 2 of them up instead of training them or using them bc one supposedly eats a child.

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3 dragons who have not been trained and who act wildly. Regarding Ghost, you expect Jon to have Ghost attack brothers of the Night's Watch who disagree with him. How is that going to make things work better for him?

Oh give me a break!! He is repeatedly warned to keep Ghost close, and then he thinks about how Ghost is always with him anyways. And then without even any break in his internal dialogue, he abruptly starts confining Ghost in his room.

Obviously, Ghost was acting hostile to the brothers that he sniffed were plotting against Jon. Jon knew he was disliked. He knew there was a plot because Mel told him. But then abruptly discarded her wisdom because his 'sister' turned out to be Alys Karstark instead of Arya Stark. Obviously Mel made it all up cause she was so hugely off-base!

Anyhow, things hardly couldn't have worked any worse than getting stabbed multiple times if he kept Ghost close. It was Ned and Robb all over again. Just more obvious and more frustrating, because GRRM has rarely been so brutally clumsy in handling his most important characters. In fact, every Jon and Dany chapter of the first three books came across as incredibly meticulous.

The Jon who had Janos hanged has almost zero resemblance to the Jon who ended up getting himself stabbed.

As for Dany? She was supposed to be focusing her efforts on training her dragons. Instead, she focused her efforts on playing softball with the Great Masters and crying about the fighting pits, after being repeatedly told and advised by more cunning men that she needed to do to them what she did to the Astapori.

Did she think that the dragons were going to be more easily tamed when larger and half-feral from being neglected?

Dany had no evolution in this story. Just a kind of re-evolution. What was a greater sacrifice to her principals anyways? Slaughtering all the Great Masters, or letting slavery resume? She chose to let slavery resume.

I could go on and on and on. It's just boggling, compared to where the characters stood at the end of ASoS.

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Also, where Dany is concerned, GRRM made the rare mistake of giving us one /more/ chapter than we would have liked. Dany riding away on a dragon was probably the most /gentle/ cliffhanger he could've given us. Whereas the final final cliffhanger was more like what you'd expect from an opening chapter and not nearly so compelling.

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When did I say use ghost to attack the NW?

He - ghost - has saved Jon's life numerous times. He has never attacked or growled at anyone who has been "good". Yet Jon, in all his wiseness, declares he is marchign south, leaving the wall, forfeiting his vows and locks up his wolf when he does this. Dumb.

and BTW, Jon doesnt leave when his father and brother die, but when Ramsay Bolton in all his craziness writes a letter to him, he decides to leave? doesn't make sense

Dany - again, you have 3 dragons and you choose to lock 2 of them up instead of training them or using them bc one supposedly eats a child.

The problem with training the dragons is who is going to do that. It isn't like she can go find a dragon trainer in the yellow pages. Not excusing her for just keeping them locked up like that. If I were her I would be asking my advisers to go search out books for me about dragons that can be of use to me in training and understanding them. Because when you don't understand something you know do research...

I think Jon didn't keep Ghost close because it made the Queen anxious and she had eyed Ghost suspiciously, was it smart on his part? No, but she is the Queen and he probably didn't want to make her feel uncomfortable. It is only when Selyse comes to Castle Black that Jon seems to keep Ghost locked away.

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I disagree about Jon. He really evolved and acted like a commander. He still had doubts but at least he stopped hesitating every time he had to make some decision. And he was really close to creating a working relationship between Wildlings and Watch, that would create a strong force to defend the Wall. Yes, he acted unwise concerning Ghost but he couldn't really allow himself to being paranoid. Melissandre was proven to be wrong multiple times, so really not a great base to throw accusation when Watch temper is already strained. And didn't had the knowledge that readers have about how exactly Grey Wind warned Robb, so yes - we saw the signs. But we were so much wiser, and without the truckload of stress that Jon had. He had many things to do, lot of opposition, all the burden of command. I say it's understandable he made some mistakes.

Dany, however, I cannot defend. She's extremely entitled and not very wise. Makes stupid decisions that someone else pays for. Yeah, nothing new here, move along.

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I actually think Hardhome's quite important. The details of its past, the fact that Melisandre has apparently had a vision of fighting taking place there behind a wooden wall with fire arrows arcing out... there's something to it.

Jon's actual reasoning is absolutely sound, in any case. Letting the Others collect thousands of wights more doesn't seem a sound policy. If he has to spend a few hundred men to get the wildlings out, well, it's worth the risk, despite it all. Marsh and Yarwick are rigid men who can't see further than their own biases.

And Dany, you can't rule in the same fashion that you conqueor. She had to learn. It's not as if she never made choices -- marrying Hizdahr, having the wineseller's daughters put to the question "sharply", subduing the hinterland, allying with Lhazar, etc. are all fairly reasonable actions in the name of stabiltiy and peace, and some of them aren't necessarily easy actions to take. Most importantly of all, the peace she tried to make was working -- the Shavepate admits it. Drogon broke it, though, and matters were only compounded from there.

I'm not sure what this is about slavery resuming. One notes that she never actually set out to wipe out slavery as a predominant goal. She had the Yunkish free their slaves... but she never required them not to make more slaves, and in Meereen she allowed men and women to sell themselves into slavery of their own volition, if they wished. She states a sort of long-term vision, I believe, but she's manifestly not trying to make it happen when she has much more present problems to deal with (the Sons of the Harpy, the dragons, the faltering economic situation, the pale mare, etc.) and is satisfied with having ended the slave trade in Meereen.

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Jon and Dany don't have minds of their own when it comes to this. Its GRRM.

Jon goes from "killing the boy" in the first chapter, to a complete dumbass in the last.

Its like he wrote these chapters 8 years apart and forgot about the first. Oh wait...

It takes Dany 20 chapters of dilly dallying to figure out that the dragons are her children, not the foreigners.

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I disagree about Jon. He really evolved and acted like a commander. He still had doubts but at least he stopped hesitating every time he had to make some decision. And he was really close to creating a working relationship between Wildlings and Watch, that would create a strong force to defend the Wall. Yes, he acted unwise concerning Ghost but he couldn't really allow himself to being paranoid. Melissandre was proven to be wrong multiple times, so really not a great base to throw accusation when Watch temper is already strained. And didn't had the knowledge that readers have about how exactly Grey Wind warned Robb, so yes - we saw the signs. But we were so much wiser, and without the truckload of stress that Jon had. He had many things to do, lot of opposition, all the burden of command. I say it's understandable he made some mistakes.

Dany, however, I cannot defend. She's extremely entitled and not very wise. Makes stupid decisions that someone else pays for. Yeah, nothing new here, move along.

Even if there is some world logic to the Jon side of things - which I don't believe there is but I'll allow since you seem a reasonable man - where is the storytelling logic behind it?

No matter which way you slice it, the evolution of Jon and Dany as mature characters peaked in either the first chapter or two of ADwD or last chapters of ASoS (both written over ten years ago), and then from the moment it picked up around what he's started probably in early 2010, their maturity just nosedives.

Basically, they had to stupid themselves out of the five year gap...Out of the Night's Watch, and out of Mereen, respectively.

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No internal dialogue about locking Ghost up? Warnings about keeping him close?

A huge factor in keeping Ghost locked up was the wargboar. He certainly thought about that.

It was clear that Jon didn't fully trust Mel. Recall his complaints to her regarding her failed visions. Who besides her gave him that warning? Sounds like you're saying Jon is stupid because he didn't listen.. to someone he didn't trust. Not a fair judgement.

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I actually think Hardhome's quite important. The details of its past, the fact that Melisandre has apparently had a vision of fighting taking place there behind a wooden wall with fire arrows arcing out... there's something to it.

Jon's actual reasoning is absolutely sound, in any case. Letting the Others collect thousands of wights more doesn't seem a sound policy. If he has to spend a few hundred men to get the wildlings out, well, it's worth the risk, despite it all. Marsh and Yarwick are rigid men who can't see further than their own biases.

And Dany, you can't rule in the same fashion that you conqueor. She had to learn. It's not as if she never made choices -- marrying Hizdahr, having the wineseller's daughters put to the question "sharply", subduing the hinterland, allying with Lhazar, etc. are all fairly reasonable actions in the name of stabiltiy and peace, and some of them aren't necessarily easy actions to take. Most importantly of all, the peace she tried to make was working -- the Shavepate admits it. Drogon broke it, though, and matters were only compounded from there.

I'm not sure what this is about slavery resuming. One notes that she never actually set out to wipe out slavery as a predominant goal. She had the Yunkish free their slaves... but she never required them not to make more slaves, and in Meereen she allowed men and women to sell themselves into slavery of their own volition, if they wished. She states a sort of long-term vision, I believe, but she's manifestly not trying to make it happen when she has much more present problems to deal with (the Sons of the Harpy, the dragons, the faltering economci situation, the pale mare, etc.) and is satisfied with having ended the slave trade in Meereen.

I totally agree on Hardhome, you have to get 4k wildlings out before they become 4k ghouls. Jon has been smart in all that he does at the wall, with ghost, through 4.9 books, then he goes dumb and locks up ghost in the most important decision of his life. Mind blowing.

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Jon was becoming a good leader, yes. But a terrible one at the same time. Instead of sending away those men who disliked and distrusted him, he sent away his friends and kept those men close. Just stupid. Being a good leader doesn't mean you can't have friends.

There's just no excuse for Dany. She had traveled such a hard journey to become the woman that she was and that's just completely erased. She goes back to the unsure teenage girl and spends most of the freaking book there. Only her final chapter, after yet another "rebirth" does she begin to resemble the person she had become at the end of Game of Thrones!

Just makes no sense.

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No internal dialogue about locking Ghost up? Warnings about keeping him close?

A huge factor in keeping Ghost locked up was the wargboar. He certainly thought about that.

It was clear that Jon didn't fully trust Mel. Recall his complaints to her regarding her failed visions. Who besides her gave him that warning? Sounds like you're saying Jon is stupid because he didn't listen.. to someone he didn't trust. Not a fair judgement.

Mel's 'failed' vision was seeing Alys Karstark, a girl that looks almost identical to Arya Stark, instead of Arya herself.

Ghost has been his radar danger detector for the entire series. He is specifically warned about keeping Ghost close and a plot being afoot. And the moment Ghost starts growling, he just assumes the direwolf is acting feral and locks him up.

By this time, Jon's own common sense...his own progression as a leader of men and as Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, should have been enough. Instead, he practically reverts to a character as immature as the first book, when he decides to break his vows over Ramsay fricken Bolton.

He could have taken Stannis offer in the first chapter, when he thought everyone dead too, and saved everyone a world of pain, if GRRM was just building him towards becoming a foolish boy again, ready to run off for every stupid reason. I'd have stabbed Jon too, if he meant to either get more men killed at Hardhome (after losing Cotter's fleet) or else march on Winterfell with an army of wildlings to fight another king's war.

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Oh give me a break!! He is repeatedly warned to keep Ghost close, and then he thinks about how Ghost is always with him anyways. And then without even any break in his internal dialogue, he abruptly starts confining Ghost in his room.

Obviously, Ghost was acting hostile to the brothers that he sniffed were plotting against Jon. Jon knew he was disliked. He knew there was a plot because Mel told him. But then abruptly discarded her wisdom because his 'sister' turned out to be Alys Karstark instead of Arya Stark. Obviously Mel made it all up cause she was so hugely off-base!

That is not a break with his character though because he has never trusted Melisandre and has always taken everything she had said with a grain of salt. He has never struck me as someone who took Melisandre and her visions all that seriously.

Not saying it was the smartest choice but Jon has always been mistrustful of Melisandre so naturally he isn't going to act on everything she asks him to do. Is it smart? obviously not. And he paid for his foolishness.

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I'm not sure what this is about slavery resuming. One notes that she never actually set out to wipe out slavery as a predominant goal. She had the Yunkish free their slaves... but she never required them not to make more slaves, and in Meereen she allowed men and women to sell themselves into slavery of their own volition, if they wished. She states a sort of long-term vision, I believe, but she's manifestly not trying to make it happen when she has much more present problems to deal with (the Sons of the Harpy, the dragons, the faltering economic situation, the pale mare, etc.) and is satisfied with having ended the slave trade in Meereen.

I'm surprised in you, Ran. It's repeatedly stated that Dany's abolition of slavery and explicitly, them not making new slaves, is a huge part of her goal. It is explicitly mentioned that Yunkai being allowed to resume slavery is a condition of the 'peace' they gave her, which also upset her.

Heck, the Widow wanted her to come to Volantis to strike off the shackles there too.

That is not a break with his character though because he has never trusted Melisandre and has always taken everything she had said with a grain of salt. He has never struck me as someone who took Melisandre and her visions all that seriously.

Not saying it was the smartest choice but Jon has always been mistrustful of Melisandre so naturally he isn't going to act on everything she asks him to do. Is it smart? obviously not. And he paid for his foolishness.

Even if you allow that, where is the storytelling logic in having Jon effectively retread the same character arc? He acted like a foolish boy. He acted like Ned, or Rhaegar. And it was jarring after the book started out with him hardening himself to the realities of command and killing Janos. The last Jon chapter is almost unbearably incomprehensible in the choices he makes.

Even if you can twist to make it seem logical from a character's point of view, it's not logical from a storytelling point of view.

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If Jon didn't go save his father, avenge his brother Robb and OTHER brothers, it doesn't make sense he'd go to Bolton. Sorry. Don't buy it at all, weak weak plot device.

All because he called him a bastard and said he'd eat his heart. Yeah. "They hate me because I'm better than them!" Game of Thrones Jon all over agian. Utter nonsense.

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Jon has some reasonable things going on, his chapters are mostly boring though becasue there is no real progression. What happened over the length of DwD could have been summed up in like 5 chapters. But Dany? Unforgivably stupid, I really wish she would just die so that the pacing of the books could get better. Every single one of her chapters was a waste of time since way back in Clash of Kings. Pretty much she has been useless and boring since she she took the Unsullied.

Jon is a reasonable Lord Commander, he just is to green to know that some people are going to react outrageously. I think once he pulls a Dondarion that we are going to see him get a lot better at command.He actually accomplished a lot even though his chapters are all pretty leaden and boring,getting the wildlings on his side, sending out scouts and advising kings and all that.

Dany on the other hand sits around and bones Daario Naharais and whines about how she's the blood of the dragon. She's pretty much a joke now, she didn't make decisions based on what was best for the cities she conquered she just basically did whatever she wanted because she got emotional. If she really cared so much she could have gone to Westeros and conquered it and then come back to free the slaves of the Free Cities. She dpesn't take advice at all and she basically just does nothing for 11 chapters but spin her wheels and pretend to be queen.

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